Thinking about taking the plunge

[benji182]

A few years ago now (maybe 4 or more) I bought a few bits and bobs to watercool my PC however I just never got round to it and would like to ask you all for some advice please.

I have an EK Res 150 with two barb fittings (don't even know the size of these). I also have an old Thermochill 120.2 PA Radiator with the larger 24mm spacing (I know this much that it isn't common now). The barbs that came with the Res don't fit the Rad so I'm thinking about scrapping the Rad and buying a bigger one anyway. I have a TJ07 so looking at maybe a 3x 120mm or a 4x 120mm Rad so that if I were to add a GPU waterblock it could handle the heat better.

I know that I need the following and any advice would be great.
+ CPU Water block
+ Pump
+ Fittings/barbs
+ Tubing
+ Coolant
+ Bigger Radiator maybe?
+ Fans ?

Now despite having read a few threads including the sticky in this section I have no idea where to start. I am not sure about what is good or not.


I have looked at the Phobya CPU-Cooler UC-2 LT which seems to have some good reviews so was thinking about that for the CPU block but I don't know a thing about pumps etc.

I have a tube res but was thinking that maybe one that is built into the drivebay would be better or at least easier to mount?

Also despite the Res having barbs I do like the look of compression fittings despite the price tag.

Any help would be much appreciated.



Edit: Fans, my system currently has Sharkoon Silent Eagle 120mm fans (ones with the golf ball fins). Would these be okay to use on a new radiator or would I need something with high RPM?

 

[Cr4zy]

I believe the old thermochill rads have 3/8 fittings where as almost everything now is 1/4threads that's probably why it doesn't fit. You can get fittings for 3/8 or adaptors for 3/8 to 1/4. Im not sure id get rid of it, they're awesome radiators.

CPU Blocks, look at reviews and see how they perform. Here's a great waterblock roundup http://www.xtremerigs.net/reviews/water-cooling/2012-cpu-water-block-roundup/ Most things are extremely close in temps these days so find one you like or can afford.

Pumps, Laing still make some of the best a DDC or D5 with a custom top will do every loop. The DCP4.0 by EK is a pretty good performer if you have low restriction. Things like the Swiftech MCP35X (laing ddc variant) (if you can find any) are wonderful because they support PWM control.

Fittings, compression or barb comes down to personal choice. I use 1/2" barbs with 7/16"ID 5/8"OD (16/11mm) tubing it fits wonderfully over larger barbs with no real need for any hose clamps. Compressions will fit the tubing they're designed for, so as long as you get two that match there should be no problems. The price is always a factor though and barbs are cheaper.
Tubing is really up to you, find a colour you like, or clear if you want and the size you want. I find the 16/11mm to be a almost perfect size, personally.

Coolant has a wealth of options, I just use Distilled Water + Biocide in my loop and always have done, never had an issue doing so. You can of course grab a coloured coolant, mayhems have some great stuff probably the most variety of all too.

Radiator size depends on what you need to cool. I have a 4x120mm in the bottom of my tj07 which I've had for a while, it easily cools my 680 and i7 950. The bigger, the slower you can run fans and the quieter you can have it, also giving you more cooling power if you want to overclock. I think most setups on modern day hardware can easily be done by good 3x120s.

Fans, Gentle Typhoons for radiator fans. Because they are awesome. Im not sure how good the ones you have are at pushing air, it's not all about the RPM it's their ability to get the air through the radiator, GT's have the best pressure output for their size and speed.

I use a tube res in my tj07, mounted (shoddily) on the right side of the motherboard tray. Im not a fan of bay mounted ones personally, but its up to you, refilling with certain bay ones can be a pain depending on the fillport location, but a tube res can be just as bad if you cant get to it or have no way of filling it if you use all the ports.

 

[benji182]

Thank you very much Cr4zy.

Was the 4x120mm radiator easy to fit in the lower compartment of your TJ07? I am assuming you use a pair of the rad mounts to keep it in place.

Also do you use a fan controller or anything like that?


Lastly on the res/pump I'm just a bit worried that it will be noisy. Idea behind the watercooling was to have the case running as quiet as possible. If you have the D5 pump mounted to the base in the lower part of the case I'm assuming there would be more noise than if it was mounted in/on the drive bay res.

 

[Sprite]

Lots of people just use a bit of foam under their pump to stop vibrations. The actual impeller and operation of the pump should be fairly quiet.

A good website to check out is http://skinneelabs.com/, it has lots of reviews but can be a bit overwhelming at times.

 

[ubersonic]

I also have an old Thermochill 120.2 PA Radiator with the larger 24mm spacing (I know this much that it isn't common now). The barbs that came with the Res don't fit the Rad so I'm thinking about scrapping the Rad and buying a bigger one anyway.

The PA120.2 is still pretty much one of the best 240 rads money can buy, when it came out TC were the market leaders in radiators hence why it still performs so well despite age, due to the spacing its longer than a normal 240 and a tad wider too as its designed to be used with the shroud, also the build quality was and still is A+.

Sadly Thermochill are a distant memory now, they were a UK based family business and after the boss had to throw in the towel due to ill health they were bought out by XSPC. But that doesn't stop their radiators being awesome still, apart from a Monsta nothing the same size can really outperform them to a notable degree.

These fittings will screw into the rad and convert the ports:

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=WC-260-BP

Or you can get G3/8 EK barbs for 1/3 the price which will screw straight into the rad.

What are you actually planning to cool as the PA120.2 will easily do a CPU and GPU depending on models and overclocking.

 

[paulstung]

I tried the Phobya cpu block, and changed it within 2 days, for an XSPX Raystorm. It was my first foray into water cooling but the temps, just didn't seem right. I was sitting at idle around the 34 mark, as soon as I swapped it my idle was 29. It has got to have the worst bracket for fitting ever, the most fiddily thing ever.

 

[benji182]

These fittings will screw into the rad and convert the ports:
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=WC-260-BP
Or you can get G3/8 EK barbs for 1/3 the price which will screw straight into the rad.
What are you actually planning to cool as the PA120.2 will easily do a CPU and GPU depending on models and overclocking.

Thanks for the link, I do have the shroud and neoprene gasket thingy that goes with it so could use it I guess. I would assume that 4 years of it being sat in its box up in my loft won't have damaged it in any way

It was just my i5 2500k currently as I don't have a reference cooler on my GFX card. Should I upgrade to a newer model when the AMD 8*** series comes out, then I might get that in the loop. I have a BeQuiet Rock Pro/Advance on my CPU currently and so temps aren't an issue - its purely down to watercooling looking awesome and hopefully being quieter than air.

Lots of people just use a bit of foam under their pump to stop vibrations. The actual impeller and operation of the pump should be fairly quiet.

A good website to check out is http://skinneelabs.com/, it has lots of reviews but can be a bit overwhelming at times.

Also, thanks for the link. I shall have a read of it Saturday. The one thing that confuses me about the D5 is that there are so many variants =/
Some that come with a little mounting thing I can see that would be good to use foam underneath.

Without trying to sound daft, do you just screw the barbs/compression fittings straight into the two pipes sticking out of this version:
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=WC-142-XS&groupid=962&catid=2141

I tried the Phobya cpu block, and changed it within 2 days, for an XSPX Raystorm. It was my first foray into water cooling but the temps, just didn't seem right. I was sitting at idle around the 34 mark, as soon as I swapped it my idle was 29. It has got to have the worst bracket for fitting ever, the most fiddily thing ever.

Ah, well that's a shame as I really liked the look of the Phobya, sigh.

 

[ubersonic]

I would assume that 4 years of it being sat in its box up in my loft won't have damaged it in any way

Will be fine.

It was just my i5 2500k currently as I don't have a reference cooler on my GFX card. Should I upgrade to a newer model when the AMD 8*** series comes out, then I might get that in the loop. I have a BeQuiet Rock Pro/Advance on my CPU currently and so temps aren't an issue - its purely down to watercooling looking awesome and hopefully being quieter than air.

A PA120.2 will be overkill for any CPU so you will be perfectly fine, if you do add the GPU later you can add more raddage if its needed.

By comparison I have a PA120.3 and a PA160.1 in my system cooling an i7 3820 overclocked to 4.5GHz, a GTX670 overclocked to GTX770 clocks, and motherboard VRM/chipset waterblocks. The PA120.3 has three 800rpm Scythes on it that are voltage controlled by the motherboard to reach max speed when the CPU hits 60c (the CPU has never hit 60c) and the PA160.1 has a single Corsair SP120 low noise PWM that is controlled by the motherboard to reach max speed when the CPU hits 70c. The Scythes and the SP120 run 400-800rpm depending on load and are basically inaudible.

 

[benji182]

Excellent news, I'll keep my PA120.2 and just buy some of those 3/8th to 1/4 adaptors.

Ubersonic, do you use the shroud on your ThermoChill radiators? If so what is the purpose of it?

 

[benji182]

If I were to be running a simple CPU only loop for the time being, would I need more than 1Litre of coolant?

Are there any I should avoid as well?

 

[ubersonic]

Excellent news, I'll keep my PA120.2 and just buy some of those 3/8th to 1/4 adaptors.

Ubersonic, do you use the shroud on your ThermoChill radiators? If so what is the purpose of it?

Depending on what fittings your planning on using it may be cheaper to just buy ones with G3/8 thread instead of buying fittings and adapters (I.E EK's G3/8 threaded barb fittings usually cost less than half of what their G1/4 threaded ones do as retailers still have stock and nobody wants to buy them anymore).

The shroud increases performance of the fans, by moving the fan away from the rad the is no dead spot caused by the centre of the fan and the fan requires less pressure to move the air through the rad than it would at point blank range. Shrouds work better with low speed fans (which the PA's are designed for) than high speed ones, basically with fans/shroud you get almost as much of a performance boost as you would running push/pull but with no extra noise.

Old review but still relevant:

http://martinsliquidlab.i4memory.com/Radiator-Fan-Orientation-And-Shroud-Testing-Review.html

 

[benji182]

I'm a sucker for perfection when it comes to things looking just right and having had a browse over the last few days I am 99% sure I will go for the 'Monsoon 19/13mm (ID 1/2" OD 3/4") compression fitting straight Six Pack - Matte Black'. This will mean I'd need to get the fittings but I'm not too fussed about that.

Thanks for the shroud link. It has only dawned on me that I can't have the PA120.2 where I thought I could as with the fans/shroud it will be almost flush with my Galaxy 850W PSU behind it. Looks like I'll need to move the Hard drive bay in the lower compartment else where.



Oh, and despite having the EK 150 Res I think for simplicity I'll end up getting a D5/drive bay Res as that cuts out two fittings.


I have had a route around in my old PC part box in the garage and found two 120mm Sharkoon Eagle 1000 fans. They are black / white and come with a pre-braided 3pin power cable where as the Scythe GT's mentioned earlier in the thread don't have this. Now I know performance will suffer otherwise but is it worth getting a cable braiding kit?

 

[benji182]

After having been on the EK Cooling Configurator it turns out that my GFX is reference design and only the Heatsink/fans are non-reference.

Thus I shall be looking to add my 7970 to the loop. Will at PA120.2 be enough for that and an i5 2500k or will temps sore when I'm gaming?

 

[Cr4zy]

Thank you very much Cr4zy.

Was the 4x120mm radiator easy to fit in the lower compartment of your TJ07? I am assuming you use a pair of the rad mounts to keep it in place.

Also do you use a fan controller or anything like that?


Lastly on the res/pump I'm just a bit worried that it will be noisy. Idea behind the watercooling was to have the case running as quiet as possible. If you have the D5 pump mounted to the base in the lower part of the case I'm assuming there would be more noise than if it was mounted in/on the drive bay res.

The 4x120 fits fine, it's almost perfect and yes it is held up with rad stands.

I have my pump mounted on a shoggy sandwich while being semi suspended from tubing coming from the res above. Pretty much no vibrations go to the case.

I have a fan controller for fans, with my fans split up 4x120/2x120/2x92/1x120 for rad/top/back/hardrive intake

If you plan on a larger rad in the bottom then your best option is to get 5.25 to 3.5 bay convertors for hard drives.

I think I used a liter or so filling what is currently a cpu/gpu loop with the 480 rad, so for cpu only it should be more than enough, I've always bought 2 liters so incase I have any issues I don't run out and have stuff in the future for topping up.

 

[benji182]

Thank you all for your help so far,

After having read a bit more into it I'll be getting the following. However should you see anything that won't work or I should consider changing please do let me know before I find out the hard way

• Pump & Res: XSPC D5 Dual Bay Res/Pump Combo
• CPU Waterblock: Koolance CPU-380 (Intel)
• CPU Backplate: Included ^^
• GPU Waterblock: EK-FC7970 CSQ (Copper and Plexi)
• GPU Backplate: EK-FC7970 Backplate CSQ (Black)
• Fittings: Monsoon 19/13mm Matte Black (x8)
• Tubing: Tygon R3603 19/13mm Clear (1m or 2m?)
• Fans: Gentle Typhoon 800's ? (x2)
• Fluids: Something Red? (2 litres to be safe)

I haven't budgeted for a Rad as I'm hoping my ThermoChill PA120.2 (with shroud) will suffice as I won't be going for a big overclock on the CPU and I'll leave the 7970 at default clocks.

Am I missing anything?